Facing The Beast

Revelation 13: 11-18

What does Don McClean’s hit song, “American Pie,” have in common with the book of Revelation?

They are both aimed at very particular groups of people.  People who have been steeped in a culture common to them and them alone.  They both make many references to symbols that their intended audience would immediately understand but that would be completely opaque to someone outside of that culture.

In her most recent book, Facing The Beast, author Naomi Wolf does not cite directly to the book of Revelation or to the beasts that are described in that book but it is undeniable that the beast she describes there is the very same one that Saint John describes in the New Testament book of Revelation.  It is hard to imagine that she did not have that in mind as she came up with a title for her book.

What do we know about the beasts that Saint John describes in this least read and most widely misunderstood book of the Bible?  First, we know that they are evil.  They derive their power from the Dragon (chapter 12) who is expressly identified as Satan, that power who “makes war. . . against those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (12:17).  Thus, the beast was given “power to make war against the saints and to conquer them.”  (13: 7)

The second beast, the land beast, also deriving its power from Satan, “deceived the inhabitants of the earth,” and:

Revelation 13:16-17

New International Version

¹⁶ It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, ¹⁷ so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

Thus, the two dynamics to which Saint John points in this image he gives us in chapter 13 are these: deception and coercion.  And, particularly, coercion by means of exclusion or ostracism, the idea of being left out.  In the picture John paints, the beast excludes those who refuse to bear his mark from all commerce.  If you cannot buy or sell, you are cut off from life, you cannot survive.

In Wolf’s book, she cites to the several instances in her life and in the lives of many around her where she or others were shut off from commerce or, more broadly, the flow of normal life, when they refused to be vaccinated.  In her own case, she was prohibited from eating in restaurants.  In other cases, unvaccinated students were prohibited from attending classes.  We know that NBA players and championship tennis players were not allowed onto the courts without proof of vaccination. (Kyrie Erving) (Novak Djokovic)

So much for exclusion or coercion.  Now to the other dynamic, that is, deception.  Naomi Wolf argues that a great deal more was known about the vaccines than was actually disclosed to the public at the time the vaccination push was underway.  She argues that:

• ·      the fact that the vaccines had not been tested in the way that other drugs had to have been before being placed on the market was either hidden or soft pedaled during the rollout campaign;
• ·      more was known about the widespread and often serious harms associated with the injections than was admitted (blood clots, heart problems, effects on women’s reproductive systems)
• ·      when it became more and more obvious that the vaccines did not prevent contraction of the disease, did not prevent transmission of the disease, and did not reduce the severity of the disease, or diminish the likelihood of hospitalization or death, efforts were made to keep these facts hidden; and
• ·      efforts were made and were effective to remove any dissent from the official narrative from all public discourse (Facebook, Twitter, etc) Those who were deplatformed included not only journalists like Wolf and Alex Berenson, but medical doctors who were at the top of their fields. (cites       )

In Revelation, we see two evil beasts, both with the goal of diminishing humanity, who work in concert with each other:

Revelation 13:11-15 New International Version

¹¹ Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. ¹² It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. ¹³ And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. ¹⁴ Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. ¹⁵ The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

The beasts to which Naomi Wolf refers are the government, the drug companies and the media, all of which worked in concert to coerce and to “deceive the inhabitants of the earth.”

Some will say that this comparison I have made here goes too far.  It’s off base. Saint John is talking about spiritual evil and Naomi Wolf, at very best, is talking about secular politics.  These are not the same.  But Ms. Wolfe herself, once a strict secularist, would disagree:

What we lived through from 2020 to 2022 was so sophisticated, so massive, so evil, and executed in such inhumane unison, that it could not be accounted for without venturing into metaphysics.

I shared earlier that I started to believe in God in more literal terms that I had before, because this evil was so impressive; so it must be directed at something at least as powerful that was all good.

The Sunday School is not the place for partisan arguments.  So, rather than focusing here on what Naomi Wolf claims to be true in terms of current events, we must think about this book in terms of a personal conversion.  Not from strict unbelief to Christianity, but from a completely secular and materialist viewpoint (all that is real can be seen and measured) to one that recognizes the reality of the spiritual world and the idea – consistent with Biblical theology – that there are real, supernatural powers at work in the world that are bent on evil.  That is, their goal is to diminish and enslave humanity, to spread chaos.

The dynamic we see in the life of Ms Wolf is that same spiritual dynamic recognized and explained by David Walsh in his profound and hopeful and widely ignored book, After Ideology, first published in 1990.  In that book, Walsh argues that the hope for a restoration of order must rest at least in part in the discovery – through the living of life – that the road western society is on – the road of materialism and secularism – is a road that goes nowhere.  The idea that humanity can by itself establish order and morality is an idea that the horrors of the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries has torn to shreds.

If we are to survive and thrive as human beings, if we are not to descend into chaos and slavery, we must recognize that morality – the idea of right and wrong – is not defined by the majority of the electorate or by the opinions of the educated elites.  Morality is defined by the character of God.

Moreover, our consideration of Naomi Wolf’s conversion story and her analysis of the state of the modern world in supernatural and spiritual terms can bring us right back into a very Sunday School kind of thing.  It can teach us something about how to read the Bible and more particularly, how to read the book of Revelation.

Although she does not directly say so herself, her book title hints at, and her analysis closely follows a time honored and classical interpretation of the book.

In his excellent commentary on the book of Revelation, The Returning King, Bible scholar Vern Poythress writes that there are generally four schools of interpretation of the book:

Four main approaches or schools of interpretation have developed over the centuries. Preterists think that fulfillment occurs in the fall of Jerusalem (if Revelation was written in 67-68 A.D.) and/or the fall of the Roman Empire. Futurists think that fulfillment occurs in a period of final crisis just before the Second Coming. Historicists think that 6:1-18:24 offers a basically chronological outline of the course of church history from the first century (6:1) until the Second Coming (19:11). Idealists think that the scenes of Revelation depict not specific events but principles of spiritual war. The principles are operative throughout the church age and may have repeated embodiments.

Thus, whether Naomi Wolf is explicit about it or not, her book, her interpretation of current events in terms of spiritual warfare, would put her clearly in the idealist school.  The Beast she faces is the same beast that the first century Christians to whom John originally wrote faced.  It is the embodiment of dark spiritual power that aims at the deception, enslavement of humanity, and the destruction of all that is good, all that is humane.  This beast has been organized and operative repeatedly throughout history.

That is, to say the least, interesting and of some value to us as Bible students.  But what is the real lesson here?  What does this work of Naomi Wolf, as seen alongside these passages of scripture have to tell us in practical terms?  How can it change the way we live our lives?  How can it improve our living?

For that, let us go back directly to our text.  Saint John tells us that the beast leaves a mark on everything he touches.  That mark is a number 666.  You could fill a library with the efforts of wild-eyed commentators who have undertaken to derive the meaning of that number, as if it is some sort of Davinci code that will reveal the real meaning of the passage.

But for our purposes this morning, let’s not speculate on numbers, let’s look at the general dynamics of the text and the plain and simple instructions that God’s spirit gives to the first century Christians and to you and me:

Revelation 13:18

New International Version

¹⁸ This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.^[a] That number is 666.

Here is Eugene Peterson in his book, Reversed Thunder:

Saint John expects the deceit of the land beast to be penetrated by the Christian mind: hard, critical thinking

How do we protect ourselves from organized deceit? Saint John is blunt; use your heads. Figure out what is going on.

…the land beast can be figured out. Thus, the larger than life political world is reduced to manageable terms.  The Christian, with Saint John’s help, is not overwhelmed by big government, by sensational religion, by gigantic threats, by colossal odds, by breathless claims.  The temptation to use the methods of satan to counter the force of satan is considerably weakened.  The lies of the enemy, clever as they are, are not so clever that they cannot be found out.

Use your head – all of your critical faculties.  Get the beast’s number!

Lesson, December 12, 2021

Waiting, Waiting…

Old Testament: Ruth 1: 16-17

New Testament: Matthew 23: 12

Last week we thought about the discipline of waiting.  Waiting is a part of every life and the person of faith is perhaps more aware of this than others.  For in the life of faith the practice of waiting is central.  Faith, after all, is a trusting in the promises of God.  We trust Him for sustenance and guidance here and now and for fulfillment hereafter.  We spoke last week about how different people handle or react to the waiting that is integral to human life.  In his book The Holy Longing Ronald Rolheiser writes of the human condition:

It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction.

And so, we wait.

We spoke last week about two wrong ways to deal with the desire in our hearts; a desire that must ultimately find its satisfaction in God; in eternity.  We mentioned the “fool’s way” where the person mistakes the nature of his or her desire and tries frantically to satisfy it through temporal means.  We also spoke of the “disillusioned, sensible man” who simply represses his desire.

Neither one of these approaches is right.  One leads to dissipation and disappointment.  The other to boredom and ennui.  What is the right way then?  How do we wait in faith? What kind of waiting leads to life; to flourishing?

One woman in the Bible who had to wait was Ruth.  Her story starts with near devastation.  She has lost her husband, her brother-in-law, and her father-in-law. In that day and time these losses for a woman would have been even more ruinous than they would be today.  In today’s world a woman can more easily find a means to support herself.  In Ruth’s day the only security for a woman, the only road to respectability and sustenance, was marriage. 

Moreover, Ruth is faced with the prospect of losing her ties to her closest and dearest surviving relative, her mother-in-law. 

It is gross understatement to say that, at the outset of the story, Ruth is unfulfilled.  She has no husband.  She has no children.  She has no fortune.  She finds herself in a foreign land.  She must wait for all the things she – or any other person in her situation – desires. And, as is so often the case with us and our desires, their fulfillment – the means of fulfillment – is out of her hands.

And yet, Ruth prevails.  She goes from destitution and loneliness to family, status, and fortune.  What can we learn about the discipline of waiting from Ruth?

1. Ruth is willing to wait.

A possibly quicker road to security is offered to her.  The probabilities or odds of Ruth establishing a new home for herself appear to be better if she leaves Naomi and returns to her own mother in Moab.  That was Naomi’s assessment of the situation and that is what Orpah finally came to believe about herself.  The story makes it pretty clear that Ruth had a family to return to.  And, although the story does not mention this, there was a longstanding rivalry or enmity between Israel and Moab.  The two nations had battled each other in the recent past.  No Moabite was allowed to enter the “assembly of the Lord” (Dt 23: 3) In following Naomi, Ruth was not entering into friendly territory.  She would have been regarded by many in Israel as a second-class citizen.  By almost any earthly measure, Ruth’s decision to remain with her mother-in-law is one that diminished her own prospects.

Ruth’s decision to remain with Naomi is not one based on a calculation of self-interest.  It is self-sacrificing and emotional.  In staying with Naomi, Ruth deliberately limits her chances of personal redemption.  We think of this decision as being based on Ruth’s deep affection for Naomi, but it may also be based, at least in part, on pity.

II.     Ruth had some sense of what she was really waiting for.

Often when we hear the story of Ruth being taught, we see an emphasis on her willingness to leave – “to venture out into the unknown,” our teachers said. “You know.  Leaving your comfort zone.  Like the missionaries.”

That may be valid, but this morning let’s look at it another way.  What the most remembered speech in the book tells us is that, in one sense at least, Ruth is demanding to stay:

Entreat me not to leave thee

Can we see the story as saying that Ruth’s decision was about staying in her comfort zone?  Can we imagine that Ruth’s need for love and understanding and community was most profoundly met in her relationship with her mother-in-law?

In leaving her own country, is she holding tightly to that which is most dear and valuable to herself?  In her relationship with Naomi, does Ruth have an emotional home and support that she has known nowhere else? What does the story give us in answer to this question?

1. Ruth’s devotion to her mother-in-law is not solely based on her concern for Naomi’s well-being.

We being by admitting that Ruth does feel some pity for her mother-in-law and that her decision to stay with her has something to do with the idea of caring for Naomi in her grief.  That is exactly how Boaz reads the situation:

¹¹ But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.

The story as a whole makes it very clear that Boaz is nobody’s fool, and he is not wrong in his assessment here.  Ruth’s decision is a brave and, in the short run at least, a self-sacrificing one. 

What evidence or support can we find in the story that Ruth’s decision had some basis other than a simple, albeit noble, concern for her mother-in-law?

1. There is no equivocation in Ruth’s speech.  Nothing is held back.  She will not only continue in her affection and care for Naomi, but she will adopt Naomi’s religion and live in Naomi’s land and culture, even after Naomi has passed:

 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. (1: 17)

                                    Or, as Moffatt renders the verse:

Wherever you die, there I will die, and beside you will I                     be buried

• There is evidence that Ruth already has some knowledge of God.  At the end of her speech to Naomi, Ruth backs her assertions on an appeal to the Lord:

May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

Louise Pettibone Smith, writing an exegesis for the Interpreter’s Bible:  Ruth does not say Elohim (God) as foreigners do, but Yahweh.  The writer this emphasizes that this foreigner is a follower of the true God

When we read Ruth’s speech to Naomi, it seems obvious that Ruth does not regard her decision as onerous or burdensome.  This is not primarily some project of pity or duty that she takes on herself.  This is the way she wants to go.  We might believe that in Naomi – and perhaps in her late husband and father-in-law – she has seen a different kind of life.  A kind of life, perhaps, that makes the Moabite culture in which she had been raised look rather ugly.  She has seen something of the God of Israel; something of His love and mercy.  There is something in this other culture that is beautiful and satisfying.  Maybe she understands, even in some wordless way, that this is what she really wants; what she really hungers for.

Thus, in remaining with Naomi, Ruth is not leaving her comfort zone, but rather staying right inside it!

III.     Even in her waiting, Ruth does not wallow in self-pity. Even though she cannot do much, she does what she can.

Once they have arrived in Judah, Ruth, although completely out of society and access to any kind of wealth or power, volunteers for lowly and physically taxing labor.  She goes to gleaning.  And gleaning is the picture of humility.  The gleaners are those who walk the fields behind the reapers and gather with their hands the bits of grain that the reapers have missed or passed over.  (Isaiah 17: 5-6)  Louise Pettibone Smith:  “She knew one way of overcoming sorrow.  She accepted her plight, made a decision within her control, and acted on it with energy and determination.”

How many times have men and women found themselves in the same situation?  Cut off from the corridors of power and wealth, we find ourselves having to do work that is less than that for which we are trained and qualified.  And the pay is not commensurate with the effort and time demanded.  But in the story of Ruth we have a dramatization of that proverb, often repeated in the Bible, that God exalts the humble.  To wait upon the Lord does not mean to twiddle one’s thumbs, but to accept one’s circumstances and make the best of things.

Matthew 23:12 Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

God’s providence in Ruth’s life:

³ So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech. ⁴ And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!” And they answered, “The Lord bless you.” ⁵ Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” “Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He doesn’t want to sign His nam

You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone

February 21, 2021

Old Testament; Psalm 105: 4-5

New Testament: Gospel: Luke 22: 19 

                             Epistle: I Corinthians 14: 3

Last week we left off with a reference to the Brian Wilson song, “You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone.”  We cited that song, and particularly its title, in the context of our look at Daniel and his buddies in their refusal of the King’s food.  In a sense, Daniel and his buddies “stood alone,” but one might say that they didn’t have a mess of help.  The only guy in on their conspiracy was the chief eunuch.

So, how does the idea hold up?  Well, we might say that Daniel’s decision was a lot simpler than the decisions we are faced with.  He simply refused the king’s food.  End of story.  Our decisions are more complicated.  There is so much more on our plates than food.  We have to make decisions every day about what we are going to consume in the way of entertainment and news reporting.  We are surrounded and bombarded with media in a way that would have been unimaginable to either Daniel or the King of Babylon.

But Daniel and his buddies were being force fed the pagan culture.  He was taught the “language and literature” of the Babylonian culture.  This literature and language would have been a pagan literature with an understanding of the world and of our place in it totally different from that of the Jews.  The theology and ethics they would have been taught would have been completely different from that they would have learned before. And we must imagine this regimen to have been very deliberate and vigorous.  After all, these young men were being groomed to become advisors to the king.

But Daniel and his buddies were unphased by this.  Despite the best efforts of the king and his court; despite the heavy curriculum and the deadlines and what must have been enormous pressure to conform, they were not taken in.  They apparently understood what they were being taught, but they did not buy in.  They remained true to their faith.

Indeed, Daniel and his buddies stood alone in the face of enormous, organized and official pressure to conform.  

Q: Did they have a “mess of help?”  If so, what was it?

Did their refusal of the king’s food have anything to do with their ability to withstand a surrender to the pagan culture that surrounded them?  Well, we saw last week that the story points us to the idea that the refusal of the King’s food had definite and positive physical effects on these youngsters.  But could it have affected them intellectually as well?  

Could this refusal have made the difference between being completely absorbed into the Babylonian culture and religion – hook, line and sinker – and learning the literature and language of that pagan culture with such depth and insight that they outpaced all of the other students in their class, but nonetheless remaining so faithful to the God of Israel that they are willing to be cast into the fiery furnace rather than deny Him?

I’ll say yes to that.  I’m not pointing to any secret chemical they gained through their vegetarian diet or to any secret chemical they avoided in the king’s food.  I am instead pointing to the importance of remembering and the habit and discipline of recalling who we are.  

Daniel’s refusal of the king’s food did just that for Daniel and his buddies.  Every time they sat down to eat it was brought home to them once again that they were not a part of the culture in which they had been involuntarily immersed.  On one side of the room was the load of rich food from the kings table and before them were the vegetables that Daniel had ordered and that the chief eunuch had reluctantly supplied.  They looked at the bounty from the king’s table and thought to themselves “that is not us. We are not partaking of that.”  Every meal they ate reminded them of their true identity and their true allegiance.

Like Daniel and his buddies, you and I are surrounded by a culture or a “world” that is dead set on intwining us in its grasp.  If you for a moment have the slightest doubt about that, then think for a moment about the leviathan of the advertising industry whose single aim is to get you and me to “buy in.”  To spend and spend and be a good little consumer and thus be beholden to those who hold the money and the power.

Think also of the pressure from the academies and the corporate employers and now even the government who would have us forget and deny our ethical and moral standards.

And the pressures against us are not only those manufactured by the powers that be.  We also suffer those things that are ever and always the lot of every human being.  Our bodies fail us.  We injure ourselves.  We fall sick. We weaken with age.

And our projects miss the mark.  We find ourselves tied to occupations that demand much and return little in the way of satisfaction.  Relationships fray and fall apart.

This world pushes in on us from every direction.  Life in all its vicissitudes pushes in on us in every direction. How can we be like Daniel and his buddies?  How can we remain faithful in the face of the pressures that surround us?  How can we remain hopeful amid the erosions of time?

In his moving short story, “In The Cart,” Anton Chekhov tells the tale of Marya Vassilyevna.  It is the late nineteenth century and Marya is riding in a rude, horse-drawn carriage across a snowy, muddy road from one small village to another in Russia.  We find out that she is on her way to collect her salary and to buy a few staples – some flour and sugar – at a store in the distant town.  While the cart rumbles along, she is passed by another cart driven by Hanov, a man she once thought of as a potential husband.  Nothing came of that though.  This man was an aristocrat and Marya, though noble born, had fallen into a life of grinding work and near poverty.  As a child, she had lived in 

“Moscow in a big apartment near the Red gate, but all that remained in her memory of that part of her life was something vague and formless like a dream.  Her father had died when she was ten years old and her mother had died soon after. She had a brother, an officer; at first they used to write to each other, then her brother had stopped answering her letters.  He had lost the habit.  Of her former belongings, all that remained was a photograph of her mother, but the dampness in the school[house where she worked] had faded it, and now nothing could be seen on it but the hair and the eyebrows.”

And now, Marya found herself alone as a schoolmarm in a tiny village.  She had never wanted to become a teacher, felt no calling to it and found in it no satisfaction.  Her paltry pay was her only means of support and from it she had to buy firewood for the classroom and pay the school janitor and the trustee.  Every morning she had to haul the firewood in and build the day’s fire.  

Given her aristocratic beginnings and education, she could not bring herself to marry a man of her own economic station and given her present circumstances, she was no temptation to any man of means. She was stuck and without hope.

Her trip that morning is not marked by any great events. It is much the same as hundreds of other such ordinary and necessary trips Marya has had to make during her 13 years as a teacher.  In the town she lunches at an inn and is subject to the harassment of rude, local men.  On her way home her hardheaded driver runs the cart through a high ford and floods the floor of the cart, soaking Marya’s legs and ruining her packages of flour and sugar.  Her cart is passed by once again by Hanov, the man she once thought of but thought of no more. As Chekhov puts it:

Her past was here, her present was here, and she could imagine no other future than the school, the road to the town and back again, and again the school and again the road. 

For thirteen years she had been schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning how many times during all those years she had been to the town for her salary; and whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or winter, it was all the same to her, and she always — invariably — longed for one thing only, to get to the end of her journey as quickly as could be.

There are no great events in the story – no explosions or battles or romantic scenes, but something does happen to Marya; something that she had not anticipated and that changes her.  After crossing the ford and while she is cold and wet and her packages are ruined, her cart is forced to halt by a stopped train blocking the crossing at the town’s station.  As she sits in her cart, Marya spies a woman stepping out of a luxury rail coach

Here was the train; its windows reflecting the gleaming [late afternoon] light like the crosses on the church in her little village across the tracks: it made her eyes ache to look at them. On the little platform between two first-class carriages a lady was standing, and Marya Vassilyevna glanced at her as she passed. Her mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had had just such luxuriant hair, just such a brow and bend of the head. And with amazing distinctness, for the first time in those thirteen years, there rose before her mind a vivid picture of her mother, her father, her brother, their flat in Moscow, the aquarium with little fish, everything to the tiniest detail; she heard the sound of the piano, her father’s voice; she felt as she had been then, young, good-looking, well-dressed, in a bright warm room among her own people. A feeling of joy and happiness suddenly came over her, she pressed her hands to her temples in an ecstasy, and called softly, beseechingly:

“Mother!”

And she began crying, she did not know why. Just at that instant Hanov drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she imagined happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and nodded to him as an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her that her happiness, her triumph, was glowing in the sky and on all sides, in the windows and on the trees.

What had happened?  Marya had remembered.  Through the sight of this woman who reminded her of her long-lost mother, the past came rushing back to her.  Her warm home, filled with love and music.  And she remembered who she was – beloved; a nobleman’s daughter, with every reasonable hope of continuing love and prosperity.  And for a moment, the grind of the last 13 years was washed away, and Marya was her true self again.

Life and the world do the same to all of us.  Because of its vicissitudes and because of the disappointment and frustration that is the lot of every man and woman we are tempted to lose hope and surrender to meaninglessness.  That is why Christ calls us to remember:

Luke 22:19 ¹⁹And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

As we remember Christ and His sacrifice, we remember who we are.  Like Marya was, we are beloved. We are children of God and, as such “heirs of the grace of life.” We are not alone and we are loved with a love that is everlasting and perfect.

What does that love look like?  It is unstinting and not apportioned according to our merit.  Rather, it is the outflowing of the heart of God.

And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. ²¹ And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’^[b] 22 But the father said to his servants,^[c] ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. ²³ And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. 

For poor Marya, her moment of joy immediately passes, for her remembrance is only of the past.  But for you and me, it is not so. We are children of the everlasting and all-powerful God and what we are called to remember as we face the pressures of the world and the vicissitudes of time is not the past, but our future.

And that is one of the reasons we go to church. There we step away from the table that the emperor of this world has laid for us and take instead the food of heaven. As we take the bread and cup and as we sing the songs of the faith and as we pray together, we are reminded of our perfect and eternal inheritance and thereby steeled against the world that so energetically conspires to squeeze us into its mold.

We do need a mess of help to stand alone. And one place we find that help is in the church and in the contemplation and worship of our loving Father.

Love In The Time of Corona, pt 5

Old Testament Lesson: II Kings 6:24 – 7:15

New Testament Lesson: Matthew 5: 3

 

This morning we find ourselves in what should now be familiar territory. We are in the era of the divided kingdom; we are focused on the northern Kingdom, Israel. And, particularly, once again, we are concerned with the capital city of that kingdom, Samaria.  Once again, Samaria is under siege by the army of Syria (also called Aram or Aramea).  And, once again, a prophet of God plays a role in our story.

The setting may be almost the same as in our lesson weeks ago, but the characters are different.  We are dealing with the next generation now.  King Ahab has long since died by the time we get to our chapter this morning and, although the king of Israel is not named in this account, and the scholars are not unanimous in identifying him either, we can safely assume that the crown of Israel has passed more than once since Ahab’s death.  Likewise, the king of Syria is not the same Ben-Hadad who held Samaria under siege in our earlier lesson.  And by the time of this siege Elijah has passed his prophet’s mantle to his understudy, Elisha, before being taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire.

In this week’s lesson we get more detail about the effects of the current siege.  Israel is in horrible shape.  Samaria has been under siege for so long that the people of the city are starving.  They have resorted to the most barbaric and degrading means of staying alive.  The smallest and rudest parts of an animal are selling in the city for exorbitant prices.  The king himself is in mourning for his city.

What does life look like for the citizens of Samaria?  It looks bleak.  It looks hopeless.  It looks like there is no way out; no salvation for the city.  Every new day will be just like the last, only worse.

“There must be some way outta here, said the joker to the thief.” Bob Dylan, “All Along the Watchtower.”

After hearing a terrible tale from one of the women of the city, the king reaches the breaking point and declares that he will kill the prophet Elisha before the day is out. 

 Q:          Why does the king hold Elisha responsible for the trouble that has befallen Israel?

Scholars have speculated that the king holds Elisha responsible for the state of Israel either because Elisha had counseled the king to hold out under the siege, perhaps suggesting that some divine deliverance was at hand, or because the famine suffered in the city was due more to the seven years of drought that Elisha had prophesied, rather than the siege itself.  Maybe the king simply felt that, given his prophetic powers, Elijah had something to do with the trouble, or could have done something to ameliorate it.

But Elijah is in step with the Spirit and so always a step ahead of the king.  Before the king can carry out the threatened execution, Elisha promises that the famine will end on the morrow.  Tomorrow, says Elijah, food will be so plentiful it will be cheap; cheaper than you can imagine.

At first blush this speech may look glib – like Elisha is takin the easy way out; temporarily mollifying the king to escape his immediate wrath.  That’s what the king’s messenger believes.  How could such a thing happen, he says, how could such a dramatic change occur in such a short time?   Not even if God opened the very floodgates of heaven.

 But whether he is convinced or not, the king relents.  For the moment, Elisha is spared.

There are actually two plotlines in today’s story.  We’ve looked at the first scene in the first plotline – the interplay between Elisha and the king.  Now we’ll look at the situation in Samaria not from the top of the power hierarchy, but from the bottom.

And at the very bottom of the social order in the besieged city of Samaria are the four lepers.  They were the outcasts of society.  Leprosy, the type of leprosy spoken of in the Bible, was contagious and thought of as a punishment from God, a mark of His disfavor, the result of the victim’s sin.

Thus, the lepers are in no-mans-land, outside the city walls

Independent of what is going on between the king and Elisha; without knowing that Elisha has prophesied an immediate end to the famine; the four lepers consider their situation.  They are living at the gate of the city and they know that they will die there.  They also know that if they re-enter the city, “the famine is there” and they will die. And so, they decide to act. They decide to march away from the city and into the camp of the enemy – the Syrian or Aramean army that is now holding their city under siege.  This seems at first to be reckless, they could be moving from a slow death with some possibility of reprieve and into immediate, violent death.

But the story tells us that the lepers act out of moral wisdom.  They, out of all of the citizens of Samaria, understand their poverty, their plight, and the reality of the situation.  They realize that they cannot rely on their own resources, on what is available to them in the normal course of affairs in the city gate.  They are cornered by circumstances and they take a desperate measure, but the only measure that is available to them.

Is the story of the lepers an example of “poverty of spirit?”  Jesus said “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”   In this very famous and familiar verse from the Sermon on the Mount, the Greek word that is translated into the English word “poor” is  “ptochos” (tho-hass), and it is a word with extreme connotation

πτωχός ptōchós, pto-khos’; from πτώσσω ptṓssō (to crouch); akin to G4422 and the alternate of G4098); a beggar (as cringing), i.e. pauper (strictly denoting absolute or public mendicancy, although also used in a qualified or relative sense; whereas G3993 properly means only straitened circumstances in private), literally (often as noun) or figuratively (distressed):—beggar(-ly), poor.

 When Jesus says, then, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” he means: “blessed are those who subjectively recognize what is objectively true about themselves — namely, that they are spiritually bankrupt and sinful apart from My grace.”

The way into the Kingdom of Heaven is to realize that we have nothing.  We have not the means to love our neighbor, to love our enemies, to keep our word, to avoid moral disintegration outside of the grace of God.  “Sadly, most of us don’t think that.  Most of us think that we have something.  That we are somehow secure in our own resources, in our own strength.”   Did the citizens inside the walls of Samaria believe that?

If we think of this story as an allegory it is easy to see the story of the lepers as a story of conversion.  A story of people deciding not to cling to this world, not to cling to “the city of death.”  They are brought to the end of themselves and they make a sober decision based on a subjective recognition of their objective circumstances.

Can we take the allegory a step further?  If we see the lepers as representative of humanity, what can we say about their decision to walk into enemy territory?

Do we gain some understanding if we think of the lepers’ fear of the Syrian Army as representative of a fear of God?  I’m not talking about the healthy fear of God, the idea of holding Him in highest reverence; I am talking about fear as the opposite of trust. 

Can we trust Him?  To trust God is to give up control.  It is, in some sense, to walk away from the known and into the unknown, the unseen.  The lepers did not know what awaited them over the next hill.  They were walking into the unknown.  But they knew they were leaving certain death.  Will the Syrian army be merciful to an enemy suffering from a loathsome disease?  Will God be merciful to the sinner?

Q:           How is the situation of the lepers any different from the other citizens of Samaria?

It was 1939 that firmly established the Royal Christmas Broadcast as a British tradition. Dressed in the uniform of the Admiral of the Fleet, sitting in front of two microphones on a table at Sandringham, King George VI spoke live to offer a message of reassurance to his people. It was to be a landmark speech and was to have an important effect on the listening public as they were plunged into the uncertainty of war:

“A new year is at hand. We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace, how thankful we shall all be. If it brings us continued struggle we shall remain undaunted.”

He went on to quote from Minnie Haskins’ poem “The Gate of the Year” (1908) :

I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.’

There is more than one moral to be drawn from this morning’s reading, but surely idea that is front and center in the story is this: Tomorrow does not have to be like today!

That sounds so obvious and even trite that we might wonder if it is even worth stating.  But it is worth stating and it is worth contemplating.  And one reason for that is that so often, in the most important parts of our lives, we don’t believe it.  We may be like the king’s messenger who, when hearing of the promised salvation of the city, calls the good news a lie.  Such a thing cannot happen, he says, not even “if God opened the very windows of heaven.”

What did the citizens of Samaria believe?  That their situation was hopeless.  That life would not change.

You and I are much better off than the citizens of Samaria in our lesson.  We, after all, have food and freedom of movement.  But, how easy is it for us to believe that our lives are set on a course that we can’t alter? The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  Nothing will change.  There will be no fulfillment; no reward; no satisfaction of our deepest desires; no good surprises, no grace.  All is vanilla and grey.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. And go to the grave with their song still in them. The second half is a misquote of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ The Voiceless.

“Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them.”

 What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”

Are we being a bit overdramatic here?  Can we really say that the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation?  Isn’t that a bit much?

Q:           What evidence do we see that would support the idea that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation?

But then look at what men and women are doing to themselves!  Look at the flood of addictions.  Why do men and women get hooked on pain killers?  What pain is it that they are trying to escape?  Why are men immersing themselves in pornography?  Have they lost all confidence in themselves that they could ever support a real relationship?

While the people of Samaria were held hostage by a flesh and blood enemy, our battle is not against flesh and blood:

¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Ephesians 6:12

Christ has defeated the powers and principalities that formerly held us in thrall. 

¹⁵ And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.^[a]

Colossians 2: 15

 

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8: 37-39

In trusting Christ and leaving behind the city of death, we, like the lepers, find abundant grace.

Isaiah 55: 1  “Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.

Love in The Time of Corona

James 1: 2-3; 12

² Count it all joy, my brothers,^[a] when you meet trials of various kinds, ³ for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

¹² Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve considered how we might view or think about the life changes that have been forced upon us by the pandemic.  We said that we might think about these changes as a kind of fast.  We have been deprived of so many of our normal, daily activities that we are forced to think in new directions.  So many of our diversions are no longer available at the flick of a switch, and our appreciation for the necessities of life and for the work of those who bring those necessities to us has increased

Last week, we studied the passage in the book of James that enjoins Christians to “count it all joy when you meet various trials.”  Although the trials we are dealing with now may not be the kind of trials that James was referring to, we nonetheless concluded that we as Christians are called to patient endurance in the face of circumstances that we cannot immediately change.

This morning, we focus on verse 12:

Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love Him.

We may feel hesitant to talk about rewards.  We know that as soon as we do, we’ll be criticized, even mocked.  Virtue is its own reward, our critics will say.  Goodness is for goodness sake alone.  The minute you start talking about crowns and the like, you will be labeled a “mercenary” and accused of acting in self-interest, whatever you do.

Let’s start out by giving the devil his due here.  It is certainly the case in these days of unaccountable and unethical televangelists who exploit the fears of their audiences and superficial celebrity religion; there is plenty of room for just criticism.  The critics have every right to cry foul.  When we see TV preachers in private jets and hear the “name it and claim it” theology, we see that Janis Joplin’s song “Oh, Lord, won’t You buy me a Mercedes-Benz” is a pretty fair indictment.

Given all of that; given the pervasiveness of this kind of thinking and the damage it does to the church, would we not be much better off just to forget about the idea of rewards altogether?  Especially in the here and now.  To just be good for goodness sake and let it go at that? 

However tempting that might be on the surface, there is a serious problem with it – the scriptures simply do not allow it.

In Hebrews, chapter 11 and verse 6, the writer makes a simple and direct declaration:

⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (ESV)

That, as Robert Duvall might put it, is “mighty big talk.”  If you are going to draw near to God, you don’t only have to believe that He’s real; you have to believe that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.  The scriptures do not allow a version of religion that views God as merely a disciplinarian or one who is disinterested in the lives and well-being of His followers.  Christians are not stoics.  The idea of reward is central to the faith.

Here is how CS Lewis put the matter:

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward … promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures[] – ignorant children who want to go on making mud pies in a slum because they cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

We’ve already considered the problems with the idea God granting rewards to his children.  How this idea has been hijacked and employed by many to tempt the masses into giving them money; how this idea might be seen as the “opiate of the masses” the “pie in the sky, by and by, when you die” that Marx argued was employed by ruling elites to prevent the oppressed from demanding justice, here and now.

But there are problems the other way, too.  There are serious problems with ignoring or soft-pedaling the idea that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

Have you ever sold short someone you loved?  I have.  It was a long time ago and I still regret it.  I said less when I should have said more and my hesitance cost that person an important opportunity.  It’s a bitter thing.  And if we ignore or soft-pedal the idea that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him, I am afraid we are selling Him short.

The Bible uses many means to describe God to us, but the greatest and most pervasive metaphor in the whole of scripture is the fatherhood of God.  The psalmist tells us:

¹³ Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.

¹⁴ For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.

Psalm 103

I use the KJV intentionally there, because it seems that the word pity is better than the word compassion.  We do pity our children.  We pity the recurring unfairness that they suffer; we pity their limited opportunity; their limited resources; the limits of their understanding and power in the face of life’s challenges; we pity their mortal state.

In His Sermon on the Mount, our Lord tells us more of God as father:

Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.

If we remember these things about God – that He is a father who pities us in our limitations and sufferings and that he – even more than the best of earthly fathers – is set on giving us good things,  hadn’t we better take seriously the idea of reward; the idea that He gives good things to His children.

Think for a moment of an earthly father – a very good earthly father.  A father who on his son’s 12^th birthday gives him a first-rate baseball glove.  What all is in that act?  What does the ball glove mean?

1. It is an investment in the boy’s growth.  It is a means by which he may develop his strength, his confidence and hone his skill.
2. It is an invitation to – a ticket into – the dance of life.  It invites him into play, to enjoyment, and into acceptance by his peers.
3. It is an invitation to fellowship with the father.  If the earthly father is a good one, the glove is not just a piece of leather, but a promise of time together.  The new glove means pleasant hours in the backyard playing catch with the old man.  It means time together when the town field is empty but for the two of them while the father teaches the boy to stay in front of a ground ball and how to track a fly ball through the air.
4. It is a statement of the father’s confidence in the boy – that he will undertake the challenge and be equal to it.

How will the father feel if the son ignores the glove?  If he is too busy with his own concerns and worries to notice it, or if he simply shrugs it off, thinking (wrongly) that it was really something else that he wanted.  What if the boy really does not believe that this gift from his father is a good thing?

On the other hand, what does it mean when the boy accepts and revels in the ball glove?  What does that mean?  It may – and it probably does mean – that the boy likes baseball.  But the reality is much deeper than that.  The boy’s enthusiastic acceptance of the ball glove means that he loves the father; that he revels in his father’s love; that he trusts the father’s judgement; that he longs for fellowship with the father; and that he wants to be like his father.

The KJV says that God rewards those who “diligently” seek Him.  The NIV says that those who “earnestly” seek Him.  Other translations don’t include the adverb at all.  The ESV says that God rewards those “who seek him.”   The New International Readers Version puts it that He rewards “those who look to him.”

The underlying Greek word is “eck-zee-tay-o” and it appears seven times in the New Testament.  It is sometimes translated to mean “enquire” (I Peter 1: 10) and sometimes to mean “require.”  Luke 11: 50-51.

It is an emphatic term, but I am partial to those translations that omit the qualifying adverbs like “diligently,” and “earnestly.”  

Here is why.  When I was in grade school (Hansford Elementary), one of my teachers had a real fixation about posture – about the way we sat at our desks.  That would not have been significant to me back then but for the fact that the row of students who, according to the teacher, had the best posture got to escape the classroom to the playground first.  Those of us with poorer posture had to wait it out, row by row, until we were judged worthy of release.

I would have stood on my head back then, to be released to the playground, but I could never figure out what it was the other rows were doing to get the whole posture thing right.

I don’t think that God is waiting for us to get our posture right and I think if we focus on these adverbs, like “diligently” and “earnestly” we can start to feel like maybe we haven’t got it just right.  Maybe God won’t reward us because we haven’t been diligent or earnest enough.  

I think the better sense of the word here is the one that suggests “hunger.”  God’s favor rests not so much on some white-knuckled effort to get his attention.  Rather, God rewards those who hunger for Him – who are certain that their efforts – their posture, if you will, are not enough, are always insufficient.  Theirs is the seeking not of the superior, the meritorious or the energetic, but of the starving.  They know that their destiny and fortune are all dependent upon Him.  That is the kind of seeking that He rewards.

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with the changes the pandemic has made in our lives.  But remember our first lesson – for most of us, this time of trial is like a fast – our attention has been taken away from our normal diversions and normal assumptions and has focused on God.  We are undergoing a trial of sorts and if we faithfully endure God will reward us.  We should have our eyes open for those rewards and we should revel in them.

Love In The Time of Corona , Pt 2

My 50^th high-school reunion is scheduled for this fall.   It remains to be seen, I guess, whether the planned party will actually take place, but there is some anticipation of it and, accordingly, an increased amount of activity on the class’s FaceBook page.  In fact, one very generous lady – we remember her as a girl – was so kind as to recently write a post about how she remembered the boys in our class to be unusually good looking or “tuff,” as we called it then.  This outpouring of kindness didn’t stop there, for there were other girls in the class – who may be remembering things as being a little better than they actually were at the time – who joined in this lavish praise, adding parallel comments to the initial post.

It had to happen that a few of our male classmates responded with comments like this: “Gosh, why didn’t you tell us that at the time?” and “Gosh, if we had only known.”

We are older now, and accordingly, we are kinder than we used to be. And these responses were left unanswered.  But, if we were watching a “mean girls” movie, we would know that these guys had left themselves open to a real counter punch.  Not in real life, but in the mean girls’ movie, the response would have been something like:  “Well, it wasn’t you that we were talking about.”

And when we look at this passage in James; this passage that promises a “crown of life” to those believers who endure trials of every kind, one of the questions that an ordinary Christian might ask herself is this:  Is this verse really written to me, for me, or are these crowns of life reserved for the big-timers?  For the Billy Grahams and Mother Teresas and Erik Liddell and Dietrich Bonhoeffers and the like?

After all, a crown is a pretty big deal.  Regular, ordinary folks don’t get crowns.

When God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, He did not bother with a stenographer.  The commandments were written, so the scriptures tell us, by God’s own hand on stone tablets that were given to Moses.  The New Testament didn’t come about that way, though.  In fact, a great deal of the New Testament consists of letters.   There are letters written to churches and to groups of churches in a particular area, we call these Epistles, and then there are letters written to individuals – to Timothy, to Titus, and to Philemon.  So, the New Testament did not appear from a cloud on Mount Sinai, so much of it, including what we’re going to study this morning, was what we might call ad hoc, that is, it was written to address a particular group facing a particular situation at a particular time.  The church has determined that these letters are authoritative, they are scripture, and, as such, they are relevant not only to those to whom they were originally addressed, but to all Christians, in every generation.  Here is what Paul writes about scripture:

2Tim. 3 Verses 16 to 17

[16] All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: [17] That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

The Message

Every part of scripture is God breathed and useful one way or another – showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way.  Through the word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.

The book of James, like the rest of the New Testament, is scripture.  It is authoritative, it is for us – for all Christians in every generations.  Nonetheless, we may gain a better understanding of what a letter means by considering who wrote that letter and who they wrote it to.  For example, if we have a letter that says “I love you” and we know that the letter was written by an adult woman to her mother, that means one thing.  If, however, we discover that letter was not written by an adult woman to her mother, but by a young man to his girlfriend, we know that the phrase “I love you” means something else entirely.

With that in mind, and with an eye to understanding what this verse promising a “crown of life” actually means, let’s look at the original audience for this letter of James.  Who was James addressing when he wrote this letter and, particularly, this verse 12?

There are many mysteries we are faced with when we study the Bible, but this isn’t one of them.  We have solid evidence of who the original audience was.  James states it himself in the book’s first verse:

                                James 1:1 New International Version (NIV)

1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:

Greetings.

The “twelve tribes” is, of course, a reference to the 12 tribes of Israel.  Some have thus understood the letter to have been aimed at Jewish Christians who had left or perhaps been pushed out of their homeland Israel and scattered throughout the territories of the Roman Empire – the entire Mediterranean world.  But Richard Sheef says this about the address in verse one:

To Christians, however, the twelve tribes in the dispersion would clearly mean that the letter is addressed to the church as the new Israel and to all the followers of Christ scattered throughout the world.

Compare I Peter 1: 1:  (NIV)

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,

Either way, whether the letter was originally addressed to Jewish Christians or to the entire church, the point is the same.  James is writing not to any particular individual or even any particular church in one city or another.  His audience is general.  There are no personal greetings or references anywhere in the book.  There is no evidence that he was personally acquainted with any of those to whom he wrote.

This letter is a general letter.  It isn’t addressed to Timothy, who was a face-to-face student of Paul; it’s not addressed to Titus, who was installed by Paul as a pastor on the island of Crete.   It is written to and for all Christians, everywhere.  We can say that James intended this letter for ordinary Christians, wherever they were.  People like you and me.

With that in mind, let’s look again at this promise of a “crown of life.”

How seriously can we take this?  How does such a promise sound to the modern ear, to the ear of small-town folk?

I would guess that a couple of objections would pop into mind immediately.  First a crown is something for heroes and champions – it’s a mark of the highest distinction. 

In fact, the Greek word that James uses that is here translated “crown” is the word “stephanos,” and it may be distinguished from the Greek word “diadem” that is also translated to “crown” elsewhere in the New Testament.  While a diadem is the mark of a ruler – a king or queen – stephanos more particularly refers to the laurels that are awarded to the winner of a race or other athletic competition.  Think of the title belts that are awarded to world champions in boxing.

As such, it is something that we never imagine for ourselves. We might imagine that we’ll get a promotion or raise at work, maybe – though often enough even these modest hopes are dashed – but the idea of being recognized as the winner and champion, that’s ridiculous.  It seems silly to even think about it.  Our objection might be stated in this way:  I am aware of nothing in this little, ordinary (and for the moment, at least, confined) life that I lead that could possibly warrant or justify me being awarded a champion’s laurels; receiving a crown.

“I am aware of nothing . . . .”

Let’s talk for just a moment about what the Bible tells us about our awareness or unawareness.  If we were in the classroom at church right now, I’d ask you to cite to me examples of people in the Bible who were unaware of things around them.  I would hope that we’d come up with at least these examples:

1. Where Jacob goes to sleep at Beersheba and dreams of the stairway to heaven.  He awakens and says “Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not!” Genesis 28
2. Where two of Jesus’s disciples are walking on the road to Emmaus, shortly after the Crucifixion and they are joined by Jesus, who talks to them for hours, “opening the scriptures” to them.  Even though Jesus had been their teacher and master for a long time, they were unaware that it was him.
3. II Kings 6: 15-17  Elisha
4. Hebrews 13:2 English Standard Version (ESV) Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

The bible teaches that we are surrounded by realities of which we are unaware.  In fact, those things we are aware of are small compared to that which we do not see!

How aware are we of the people who surround us?  Their needs and hopes?  Are we like those who entertained angels unawares in that we are unaware of the people around us?  We know their names and something about them, but do we really know what they need, where and why they hurt and what their hearts desire?

Here is CS Lewis:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to . . . remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, . . .

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.

We must play.

But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

The Weight Of Glory

What you and I may be unaware of is the depth of our brothers and sisters need and the height of their hopes and aspirations – their hopes and dreams.  There are certainly good reasons why people are hesitance to express these ideas – their needs; their hopes.  Life has a way of knocking the stuffing out of us; to the point where we say ‘why bother with such things?  All will go on as before.”

But, even if they are hidden away, all these things are there, in every human heart.  So much frustration, disappointment, hurt, grief, fear, and doubt.  So much loneliness.  So much confusion. Together with that depth of need, and just as hidden, is the height of hope and aspiration.  God recognizes this.  Look again at today’s scripture lesson:

³ Trust in the Lord, and do good;
    dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.^[b]
4 Delight yourself in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.

⁵ Commit your way to the Lord;
    trust in him, and he will act.
⁶ He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
    and your justice as the noonday.

And this is just the race we run on our little, ordinary lives.  These monumental things are what are at stake in our every conversation.  This ordinary life calls us to heroism in withstanding the trials that life thrusts upon us and upon our neighbors, and our faithful endurance is rightfully rewarded with a crown.

What is that crown?  What is contemplated in this metaphor?

Let’s go back to the metaphor of the training athlete.  I don’t think the message here is that if you endure the rigorous training that the reward is simply the ability to endure more rigorous training.  In other words – if you 50 pushups a day for sixty days, pretty soon you’ll be able to do 60 push ups and that will lbe your reward, your crown.  I don’t think that’s the picture that James is giving us here.  I think the picture is closer to that idea that is expressed in this morning’s old testament reading.

Synchronicity

I’m a Sunday School teacher.  I’ve been teaching at my church – an American Baptist Church – for over 35 years.  The class I’m teaching now is made up of adults approaching or enjoying their sixties.  I’ve been with this class for at least twenty years. We all know each other well. This past Sunday – yesterday, as I write this – I taught from a passage in Romans that has been a flash point for many over the years.  It’s the ninth chapter; the place where Paul writes something like “What if God chose certain people to be objects of His mercy and others to be objects of His wrath?”

The reason I taught this passage is that I believe I have just found the only satisfactory explanation of it that I’ve ever seen.  What confounds people about this passage is the idea that God makes the eternal/determinative choice between wrath and mercy not based on merit or on anything that the actors – some chosen for mercy, others for wrath – ever did.  The example cited is that of Jacob and Esau. While these twins were still in the womb, God made His choice: “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.” Stated a little differently you have the idea of God’s sovereignty over all – even the hearts of individuals – and the idea that human beings – who cannot resist the will of the Almighty are yet held responsible – and punished – for wrong choices.

How can that be fair?  How can that be just? How can this be the action of the Christian God – a God of love and justice?  How can He punish – for eternity – rational creatures who have no real choice in the matter?

Some – many, maybe most – Christian teachers and commentators simply cite this passage as a statement of the sovereignty of God.  God is boss. This world, this universe is His creation. We are His creatures. He can do with us as He pleases. They take the passage as admonishing us mortals against even considering the question that Paul himself raises in the preceding verses: 

“But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?  ‘Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”  (New International Version)

Of course, God, as omnipotent creator and sustainer of the universe can do as He pleases.  But if He did such a thing as to punish – for eternity – those rational creatures who He created but did not chose for mercy, what kind of God would He be?  How could we rational creatures think of Him?

I’m not the first person to ever raise this question.  It was on the mind of Isaac of Ninevah way back in the seventh century.  Isaac is venerated as a saint in several eastern Christian churches, and he had this to say about the problem:

It is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out when He created them – and whom nonetheless He created.

Ascetical Homilies, translated by David Bentley Hart

And old Saint Isaac was not the last person to be concerned with the problem.  That’s what actually inspired this post. Monday, the very day after I taught on this passage, I happened across a video of Joe Rogan’s interview of Megan Phelps-Roper.   Ms Phelps-Roper spent her young life enmeshed in the Westboro Baptist Church – the “church” that is infamous for picketing soldier’s funerals carrying signs that declare that the soldier’s death was God’s judgment against them.  Their signs also included such slogans as “God hates America,” and “God Hates Fags.”

Megan, in an act of impressive courage, walked away from the church a few years ago.  That meant leaving her mother and father and grandfather and other members of her family who more or less run that church and who consider her lost and unworthy of their love due to what they see as her apostasy.  Her parents no longer speak to her.

Megan’s story is fascinating, and she is herself a balanced, thoughtful, and articulate woman.  You can read her story in her new book, Unfollow, which, as they say in the movies, is available at your favorite bookstore.

But, I’m not here to sell books.  I am writing because I was struck – should I say “blown away” – by a reference Ms Phelps-Roper made during the interview that perfectly coincided with the lesson I taught to my class the day before. Synchronicity.

It would have been quite possible for a person like Megan to leave the Westboro church and remain a Christian.  There are churches in every town and city that do not hold to the Westboro church’s toxic beliefs. (In fact, it would be very hard to find another church anywhere that believes the same things as Westboro.) It was quite clear to me as I listened to the interview that Ms. Phelps-Roper was still unsettled in her beliefs and quite willing to listen to rational arguments that point in the direction of faith. It did not seem to me that leaving the cult-likeWestboro Baptist Church would necessarily mean for her a total renunciation of Christianity.

But, at the time of the interview at least, Ms. Phelps-Roper did not consider herself a Christian.  She has talked extensively with other Christians and Jews since her departure from Westboro, and thereby deepened and corrected her understanding about many aspects of the faith – such as what it means to love our neighbors.  But there was one part of the Bible that she had to reject, as she read and understood it, and she claimed that she had never been able to find anyone who could give her a coherent explanation of the passage that was not, as she bluntly put it to Joe Rogan, “evil.”

Phelps-Roper: (at 46:37)  “So, this is why I’m not a Christian anymore.  There’s this passage in Romans 9. I have real trouble with this . . . and it’s still hard for me to say that I think this is evil. . . but I think this is evil.  There’s this passage in Romans nine that talks about . . . that gives this analogy of God as the potter and humans as clay . . . it paints this picture of God . . . creating certain individuals for the express purpose of torturing them in hell forever. . . He makes you do it and then He punishes you for doing it.”

She reads this passage as further saying that no one can question this situation.  She says that she has spent a long time talking to other Christians about many of the toxic beliefs of the WBC and has been satisfied with many explanations offered to counter those ideas.  “But that one . . . I have not found any explanation for that passage that makes any kind of sense, that’s consistent with the text and not evil.”

I have.

In his book, That All Shall Be Saved, theologian/philosopher David Bentley Hart takes on this very problem head first.  He says that the passage has been misread and misinterpreted to mean the exact opposite of what Paul actually set out to say.  He says that the absurdity – “evil” – of the notion that God creates some people for the express purpose of torturing them in hell for eternity is exactly what Paul is trying to point out in the passage.  Paul is saying, according to Hart, wouldn’t it be awful if this were the case? If God actually operated this way?

And then Paul spends the next two chapters of his letter to the church in Rome to demonstrate that this notion is absolutely false – that God’s purpose in His every “election,” in his “loving” Jacob and “hating” Esau, is ultimately and finally redemptive, not just for those who are chosen, but for those who are seemingly rejected.  As Esau, in the end, is restored to prosperity and reconciled to his brother, (Genesis 33: 8-11) so will all at last be reconciled within the family of God. God allows some of His creatures to stumble, but He will not allow any of them to fall.

I know that I have not done justice to Hart’s exegesis here and I don’t have permission to quote him.  Let me just say that his explanation of this passage is elegant and insurmountable. Why, oh why, has no one seen this, offered this, before?  It has been a great comfort to me and I think it could be pivotal for honest, earnest seekers like Megan Phelps-Roper. I’ve tried every way I know how to get a message to her to share this, all to no avail.  If any of you readers have any connection with her, please tell her about Hart’s book.

Synchronicity

I’m a Sunday School teacher.  I’ve been teaching at my church – an American Baptist Church – for over 35 years.  The class I’m teaching now is made up of adults approaching or enjoying their sixties.  I’ve been with this class for at least twenty years. We all know each other well. This past Sunday – yesterday, as I write this – I taught from a passage in Romans that has been a flash point for many over the years.  It’s the ninth chapter; the place where Paul writes something like “What if God chose certain people to be objects of His mercy and others to be objects of His wrath?”

The reason I taught this passage is that I believe I have just found the only satisfactory explanation of it that I’ve ever seen.  What confounds people about this passage is the idea that God makes the eternal/determinative choice between wrath and mercy not based on merit or on anything that the actors – some chosen for mercy, others for wrath – ever did.  The example cited is that of Jacob and Esau. While these twins were still in the womb, God made His choice: “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.” Stated a little differently you have the idea of God’s sovereignty over all – even the hearts of individuals – and the idea that human beings – who cannot resist the will of the Almighty are yet held responsible – and punished – for wrong choices.

How can that be fair?  How can that be just? How can this be the action of the Christian God – a God of love and justice?  How can He punish – for eternity – rational creatures who have no real choice in the matter?

Some – many, maybe most – Christian teachers and commentators simply cite this passage as a statement of the sovereignty of God.  God is boss. This world, this universe is His creation. We are His creatures. He can do with us as He pleases. They take the passage as admonishing us mortals against even considering the question that Paul himself raises in the preceding verses: 

“But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?  ‘Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”  (New International Version)

Of course, God, as omnipotent creator and sustainer of the universe can do as He pleases.  But if He did such a thing as to punish – for eternity – those rational creatures who He created but did not chose for mercy, what kind of God would He be?  How could we rational creatures think of Him?

I’m not the first person to ever raise this question.  It was on the mind of Isaac of Ninevah way back in the seventh century.  Isaac is venerated as a saint in several eastern Christian churches, and he had this to say about the problem:

It is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out when He created them – and whom nonetheless He created.

Ascetical Homilies, translated by David Bentley Hart

And old Saint Isaac was not the last person to be concerned with the problem.  That’s what actually inspired this post. Monday, the very day after I taught on this passage, I happened across a video of Joe Rogan’s interview of Megan Phelps-Roper.   Ms Phelps-Roper spent her young life enmeshed in the Westboro Baptist Church – the “church” that is infamous for picketing soldier’s funerals carrying signs that declare that the soldier’s death was God’s judgment against them.  Their signs also included such slogans as “God hates America,” and “God Hates Fags.”

Megan, in an act of impressive courage, walked away from the church a few years ago.  That meant leaving her mother and father and grandfather and other members of her family who more or less run that church and who consider her lost and unworthy of their love due to what they see as her apostasy.  Her parents no longer speak to her.

Megan’s story is fascinating, and she is herself a balanced, thoughtful, and articulate woman.  You can read her story in her new book, Unfollow, which, as they say in the movies, is available at your favorite bookstore.

But, I’m not here to sell books.  I am writing because I was struck – should I say “blown away” – by a reference Ms Phelps-Roper made during the interview that perfectly coincided with the lesson I taught to my class the day before. Synchronicity.

It would have been quite possible for a person like Megan to leave the Westboro church and remain a Christian.  There are churches in every town and city that do not hold to the Westboro church’s toxic beliefs. (In fact, it would be very hard to find another church anywhere that believes the same things as Westboro.) It was quite clear to me as I listened to the interview that Ms. Phelps-Roper was still unsettled in her beliefs and quite willing to listen to rational arguments that point in the direction of faith. It did not seem to me that leaving the cult-likeWestboro Baptist Church would necessarily mean for her a total renunciation of Christianity.

But, at the time of the interview at least, Ms. Phelps-Roper did not consider herself a Christian.  She has talked extensively with other Christians and Jews since her departure from Westboro, and thereby deepened and corrected her understanding about many aspects of the faith – such as what it means to love our neighbors.  But there was one part of the Bible that she had to reject, as she read and understood it, and she claimed that she had never been able to find anyone who could give her a coherent explanation of the passage that was not, as she bluntly put it to Joe Rogan, “evil.”

Phelps-Roper: (at 46:37)  “So, this is why I’m not a Christian anymore.  There’s this passage in Romans 9. I have real trouble with this . . . and it’s still hard for me to say that I think this is evil. . . but I think this is evil.  There’s this passage in Romans nine that talks about . . . that gives this analogy of God as the potter and humans as clay . . . it paints this picture of God . . . creating certain individuals for the express purpose of torturing them in hell forever. . . He makes you do it and then He punishes you for doing it.”

She reads this passage as further saying that no one can question this situation.  She says that she has spent a long time talking to other Christians about many of the toxic beliefs of the WBC and has been satisfied with many explanations offered to counter those ideas.  “But that one . . . I have not found any explanation for that passage that makes any kind of sense, that’s consistent with the text and not evil.”

I have.

In his book, That All Shall Be Saved, theologian/philosopher David Bentley Hart takes on this very problem head first.  He says that the passage has been misread and misinterpreted to mean the exact opposite of what Paul actually set out to say.  He says that the absurdity – “evil” – of the notion that God creates some people for the express purpose of torturing them in hell for eternity is exactly what Paul is trying to point out in the passage.  Paul is saying, according to Hart, wouldn’t it be awful if this were the case? If God actually operated this way?

And then Paul spends the next two chapters of his letter to the church in Rome to demonstrate that this notion is absolutely false – that God’s purpose in His every “election,” in his “loving” Jacob and “hating” Esau, is ultimately and finally redemptive, not just for those who are chosen, but for those who are seemingly rejected.  As Esau, in the end, is restored to prosperity and reconciled to his brother, (Genesis 33: 8-11) so will all at last be reconciled within the family of God. God allows some of His creatures to stumble, but He will not allow any of them to fall.

I know that I have not done justice to Hart’s exegesis here and I don’t have permission to quote him.  Let me just say that his explanation of this passage is elegant and insurmountable. Why, oh why, has no one seen this, offered this, before?  It has been a great comfort to me and I think it could be pivotal for honest, earnest seekers like Megan Phelps-Roper. I’ve tried every way I know how to get a message to her to share this, all to no avail.  If any of you readers have any connection with her, please tell her about Hart’s book.

Book Review: That All Shall Be Saved

I haven’t posted here – or anywhere else – for a long time.  There are lots of reasons for that.  Some, probably, that I am not even aware of.  But one reason for my absence is my reading of a book.  It usually works the other way around: usually the books I read prompt me to write.  But the book that I am now speaking of, That All Shall Be Saved, by David Bentley Hart, stopped me in my tracks.  It’s not that I didn’t like the book – I liked it very much – or that I didn’t find ideas there that challenged and inspired me – I did.  Rather, the book overwhelmed me. 

The book is about a rather consequential idea: the eternity (or not) of hell.  I’ve been teaching Bible lessons in an adult Sunday School in a Baptist church for well over thirty years so the subject of our eternal destinies is not a new one for me.  I’ve studied the Bible all of my adult life and heard hundreds of sermons, yet I had never heard anyone deal with the subject of hell in the way that Hart does in this book.

To put it in a nutshell, Hart believes in the reality of hell, he just contends that it does not last forever.  He contends that the end of our earthly life does not foreclose the possibility of repentance – a change of mind and heart to accept the salvation that God has afforded humanity in the work of Jesus Christ.  He contends that hell is not purely punitive, but corrective, and that through the correction there offered everyone will finally decide for the good; everyone will, in the final analysis, come to Christ.

This is, to say the least, very different from what I had been taught – or, better yet, what I had come to believe, about hell.  And so, I was hesitant to write about it.  It’s not that I did not or do not like the idea of universal salvation – or, as another writer has put it, “ultimate redemption,” – again, I like the idea very much.  I just wanted to make sure that I had understood the arguments he makes and that I was not missing some obvious flaw in them.  It was, after all, such a departure from what I had before believed or at least understood to be the teaching of the scriptures on the subject.

And so, I cooled my heels and began to read reviews of the book.  The first couple I found (on Twitter) were dismissive of the book, but I did not find in them any real answer to or rebuttal of the arguments Hart makes.  The reviewers more or less said that everything that Hart says has been said before and refuted before or they mis-stated Hart’s arguments.

In fact, most of the negative reviews of this book focus on Hart’s tone. They complain that it is not scholarly or professional and is unduly dismissive of the thought of hallowed saints through the ages. My response to this is that if Hart is right, strong language is warranted. If the teaching of the church on this point is as wrong as Hart says it is, someone needs to shout it from the rooftops, not whisper it across the library table. His style and tone leave no doubt about what he is saying and how strongly he feels about his position.

I still have not found any review that really takes apart or even honestly confronts Hart’s arguments and I am now doubtful if any such will be forthcoming and so I break my silence and add to the discussion my own dust in the balance.  Here is the take of a long-time Baptist Sunday School teacher on this revolutionary and unorthodox (at least from a Western, Protestant point of view) essay.

Hart suggests early on that although most Christians here in the west think they believe in the eternity of hell, most of them really – in their heart of hearts – don’t.  I think he’s right.  They think they believe it because they think it to be the clear teaching of the church and of the bible, but if they are confronted with the idea of billions of human souls suffering in agony forever, they back away.  Particularly when confronted with the idea that some dear, departed soul they knew and loved and who never professed Christ – old uncle Fred, for example, might be there.

Hart argues that the idea of everlasting torment for the souls of the unconverted is not as “lavishly” on display in the scriptures as most of us might think.  He’s right again.  He surveys the passages on which the doctrine is based and offers explanations, consistent with his own position, that are generally fair.  Moreover, he cites at least twenty passages that provide support for the idea that, in the final analysis, the saving work of Jesus Christ will be effective for all of humanity.  I had never really considered these passages before and I don’t think Hart’s use of them in this context is a stretch.

Hart makes the case that the idea of universal salvation, or ultimate redemption, is not a new one, but was in fact dominant in the church for the first few centuries of its existence. He offers explanations for why the church took the turn that it did on the subject.

He also makes metaphysical arguments based on the character of God that I find compelling and that none of the reviews that are critical of the book even seem to get near.

If all shall be saved, then the gospel is good news – not just for the “elect,” but for everyone.

Freedom, Freedom, Freedom

In exploring the varieties of opposition that the gospel meets as Paul begins the process of world evangelization, one is necessarily struck by a primary dynamic of the gospel:  the gospel – the message of Jesus Christ – is a message of liberation.  I am not for a minute thinking like the liberation theologians of this modern age.  Count me among those who recognize what Glenn Tinder called “the universal disaster of revolution:”

There is perhaps not a single example in our time of a determined effort to produce immediate and sweeping change that has not ended in tyranny; and these efforts often result in abominations, such as those witnessed in Cambodia, immeasurably worse than those perpetrated by the old social order.

Tinder, The Political Meaning of Christianity,  Harper Collins, 1991, at p. 12

To put the matter in terms more familiar, we only need to remember the smash hit by The Who, “We Won’t Get Fooled Again:”

“Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss. . .”

It seems clear to me that the Apostle Paul did not contemplate revolution in the political sense.  He did not contemplate violence in the streets or the organization of any political party.  The revolution of the gospel is non-violent and it proceeds in the hearts of men and women.

Everywhere the gospel goes, some form of liberation follows.  We see the liberation of the Philippian slave girl who was not only oppressed and overborne by a “python spirit” but was being exploited by her “owners.”  Paul commands the spirit to come out of her and, as a consequence of that release, her “owners” no longer can exploit her. 

I am also struck by how careful Luke is to record how many of the first Christians were women.  I am not expert on the culture of first century Rome, but I am told that in many ways women were second-class citizens there, often seen as property and as sex objects.  If that is the case, then it is significant that, in making his record of the progress of the gospel, Luke continually emphasizes the primary roles that women play.  One thinks of course of Lydia – the “dealer in purples” who was the first Christian in Europe and who played host to Paul.  But there are also references to influential women in Thessalonica: “not a few of the most prominent women” (Acts 17: 4), and in Berea: “Many of them had faith, therefore, as did also many Greek noblewomen.” (17: 12)

There is a note of liberation here.  It is established that women are not second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God.  No one is embarrassed about their belonging, their allegiance and their contributions.  They do not come to Christ through their husbands, but by their own decisions.